


Before the Sunrise

by ScribeFigaro



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 23:26:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9095350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeFigaro/pseuds/ScribeFigaro
Summary: He gives her nothing, and takes from her everything.  Inuyasha Secret Santa 2016 for Amanda/@narkik.  Vampire/Human Naraku/Sango modern AU.  Because you can't spell "Lovingly crafted for Amanda" without "Lovecraftian."





	

 

 _Stop hitching with the monster man_  
_It was a bad plan_  
_But I had to get to town_  
_Unbitten_  
_But the way I found_  
_It was a hand came down_  
_And pow, I got illuminated._  
_\- Soul Coughing  
_

_“Now, these numbers are a secret code, honey,”_  
_Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers_  
_33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her to see_  
_what she thought of that, but she didn't think much of it._  
_-Joyce Carol Oates_

 

**1.**

 

There’s something out there, Sango thought. She didn’t know what, but felt certain she’d know when she saw it.

The drive was monotonous; only the numbers on the highways changed, and even those didn’t change much. But she pressed eastward, doing whatever it took to put Los Angeles behind. Eastward, chasing the sun.

She wasn't sure what she was looking for. Maybe it was just to see if the East Coast was really all that different from the West. Maybe it was just to take off her shoes, let her feet sink into wet beach sand, and watch the sun rise over the sea for the first time in her life. Wouldn’t that be nice? She'd hit the coast in Georgia, she thought, probably Savannah, but she wasn't quite sure. She had a AAA map in her car that told her the world ended not far past Indio County. Her iPhone battery died shortly before Phoenix, and she left her charger in her bedroom. But what a thing it would be, to feel sand between her toes, look up to a sky the color of creme brulee, and stand there, before the sunrise.

She was still unsure about whether or not she had chosen the right tie for Kohaku. The suit was an easy choice; it was the only black suit her brother owned. The green tie did so well to bring out his eyes, although his eyes were never open that day. In a shoebox atop the closet in Kohaku’s dorm room she found the tie pins willed to him by their grandfather, a pack of playing cards, their father’s cufflinks, and a dozen assorted coins. The coins puzzled her until she realized the dates stamped on them were her birth year, and Kohaku’s birth year, and the years in which their parents were born and married and died. In that same shoebox were five ties, most still with sales tags on them, all carefully chosen for job interviews that Kohaku would not attend. She had taken the green tie from the shoebox in Kohaku’s closet, and now it was in a wooden box underneath the ground. Atop that were flowers and a temporary marker. The gravestone takes weeks to cut and deliver; it never occurred to her it took so much work and time and she was happy about that, to know a group of artisans would know the name “Kohaku” so well, that they would carve it from living stone.

She found it difficult to be angry, or sad. After the car wreck that claimed their parents four years ago, she transferred from her out-of-state university, handled her parents’ final affairs, sold the five-bedroom, two-and-half-bath with its mortgage she could not afford on her own, and used their inheritance to set herself and Kohaku up in a cozy apartment, filled with as much of their parents’ furniture as she could justify keeping. She was six years older than him, and had been away at college for three years by then. Several distant family members made contact, offering to take Kohaku in, but questions soon followed about the estate and what sort of financial assistance it might grant the caretakers of their 16-year-old son.

Sango convinced the courts that as a 22-year-old in her last year of college (now a less-prestigious commuter college) she was fully capable of taking care of her brother, who was also near enough to an adult that his desires counted for a lot, and that was how she became Kohaku’s legal guardian. With his sister’s support and unwavering encouragement, Kohaku excelled in high school, played baseball and made all-state, and received a generous scholarship to the same out-of-state university at which Sango had spent three happy years.

He studied architecture there, learned so many things about design and function and grace. He occasionally went to parties, and perhaps had a beer or two, but nothing reckless. No drugs, no fights. He took his studies seriously and did everything right.

Kohaku came down with the flu one random Tuesday and slept the entire day, and the next, with his roommate strongly suggesting he go to the campus medical center on the third day. Kohaku insisted he was fine, he was feeling better, he just needed fluids and rest. On the fourth day, Kohaku started shaking and couldn’t stop, and by the time the ambulance arrived the meningitis had caused too much pressure on his brain for him to speak. The number listed in his student records as an emergency contact was called, and Sango arrived at Regional Hospital a few hours later, only to find Kohaku had been airlifted to University Hospital, another three-hour drive. She arrived there, and was directed to the Neuro ICU. Tubes and wires fed her brother oxygen and medicine and fluids, measured the operation of his heart and lungs, and underneath all the bandages a piece of Kohaku’s skull the size of a silver dollar with Sango’s birth year on it had been cut out to relieve the pressure on his brain. The infection, she learned, was not what was killing him. It was his body’s immune system doing what it was supposed to do, fighting the bacteria, killing them, littering the battlefield with so many corpses they suffocated the thing the immune system was trying to protect. The cause of death, according to the paperwork, was multiple organ failure, from all the toxins that coursed through his veins. She dialed the number of the funeral parlor that had done so well in handling the bodies of her parents, and the director there was extraordinarily kind and took care of almost everything.

She buried Kohaku later that week, and arranged to pick up the rest of his things from his dorm - his roommate was broken up but made sure to find boxes and bubble wrap and pack up Kohaku’s personal effects with care. She did not know the password to Kohaku’s laptop, but his roommate did, and told her, so that she could look for whatever financial or personal documents she might need or want. She found it strange that Kohaku would share this password with his roommate, because she didn’t know Kohaku trusted the roommate enough to - in the extraordinarily unlikely case of his death - turn on his laptop and delete any evidence of ever having viewed pornography.

It would not take long to pick up the cardboard boxes on Kohaku’s side of the dorm room and pack them into her car, but as she reached the exit for what used to be Kohaku’s college, she idly thought about what might happen if she just kept going. And she did. And a few miles later she thought what might happen if she did not turn around at this exit, nor the next one.

Somewhere past Phoenix she began to notice the cars coming the other direction were fewer and fewer, and she had not seen an Interstate sign for a long time. Indeed, she had not seen any sign at all for a long while. Did she accidentally exit the Interstate, and find herself on some rural highway?

The day wore on. The spherical compass glued to her dashboard bobbed this way and that, but generally agreed she was driving straight east. A red light burned like coal on the dashboard indicator. Low fuel. She realized it had been a very very long time since she’d last seen a gas station. It was another half-hour before the engine began to shake and gasp and then go silent, casting a curious array of illuminated symbols on the dashboard. A gas-station fuel dispenser, an engine, an exclamation point, a battery, each symbol demonstrating an individual system of her car that had just died. They call it multiple organ failure. The car slowed, the steering became stiff, the brakes weak.

 

**2.**

 

“Fuck,” said Sango. By pure habit she steered her car off the road, onto the parched sand, so as not to obstruct the traffic she had not seen for hours. She sat for a while, considering. How long had it been since she last saw another vehicle? She felt it had been twelve hours at least, but that made no sense, as the clock on her dash indicated she’d been driving for four hours.

At a rest stop earlier that day, she had seen pamphlets about this, about how critical it was to pack well for desert crossings. She ran through the list, making a mental note to purchase all of these things and set aside a spot in her trunk to keep them. She did this because she was terribly annoyed at herself, at her stupidity, and it did not yet occur to her she was going to die.

The air conditioning was off for scarcely five minutes before the air became intolerable. She opened the power windows and then turned off the ignition, so as to conserve the battery. She turned her iPhone over in her fingers; perhaps if she found some thin wire she could touch the right contacts and charge the phone, and call for help, instead of just causing the battery to overheat and explode. She reclined the driver’s seat and rested for a half-hour or so, because she was extraordinarily tired. She realized help would not come, at least not soon, and she opened the car doors and the trunk and took stock of supplies.

Her supplies were not many. In the trunk, a first-aid kit and a Leatherman multi-tool. The bottom end of a cardboard box with windshield washer fluid, engine coolant, a quart of oil, and a pint of DOT-3 brake fluid. If she pulled aside the floor of the trunk she could access the spare tire, tire iron, and scissor jack. Bath towel fragments repurposed as shop cloths. In the glove compartment, a vehicle manual, warranty information, vehicle registration, proof of insurance, three pens, a pad of paper advertising the title company that sold her parents’ house, several music CDs. Cars were living things, her dad told her once. They drink gasoline, breathe air, and require fluids for cooling and steering and braking. Air was plentiful, and additional servings of most of those fluids were in the trunk, and the instructions for applying them were in the glovebox. All but fuel. Her car had simply died of thirst. She wondered what that might feel like.

In the backseat, along with napkins and crumpled fast-food receipts, were two water bottles, each a half-liter when full, but now discarded trash, containing only droplets. Sango had no means to measure temperature but she estimated it at one hundred eight degrees Fahrenheit and wasn’t far off. The sweat evaporated so quickly she didn’t even realize she was sweating, and she itched because of the salty residue left on her skin as the dry air sucked water out of every pore of her body. She investigated all the ways to shake a water bottle to force the droplets to out of the nooks of the corrugated plastic walls, down toward the spout, and onto her parched tongue.

In the front seat, her purse. Thirty-three dollars and thirteen cents. The dime was minted the same year Kohaku was born. One of the pennies was very shiny and was minted this year, the same year Kohaku died. Bank cards, credit cards, loyalty cards. Tissues and bits of waxpaper and aluminum foil from an empty and disintegrated packet of breath mints.

On her person, her clothes. White sandals, a knee-length green cotton skirt, a coral blouse half-unbuttoned over a white spaghetti-strap top. Too much exposed skin for the desert sun. Under her shirt, a small crucifix that used to be her mother's, with a silver chain that seemed fairly strong - perhaps she could use that to tie something together? 

The trunk panel that covered the spare tire kit was a vaguely rectangular piece of carpet stiffened by fiber backing that looked like plywood and felt like cardboard, and it was about three feet long and four feet wide and if she balanced it on the back bumper and her head it made a serviceable sunshade.

Sango pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her legs, begged for sunset, fantasized about the cool desert air, and wondered how many hours of that she would have. How desperately she wished a traveler would come down this road, and rescue her before the sunrise.

 

**3.**

 

It surprised her how quickly the sun set, that the sky would so quickly turn from yellow pain to orange cruelty to blue indifference and black abandonment. The air cooled, although not nearly quickly enough for her tastes, but enough that she could re-enter the car and rest on the reclined driver’s seat. There was no cure, however, for her thirst. She was desperately dehydrated. Dying, perhaps. This was why it was so easy to ignore the lights in the distance, the brightest star in the sky becoming brighter and brighter still, all the while descending. A comet. An airliner. Or perhaps the morning star, cast from heaven. A hallucination, she knew, even as the bright light became two bright lights. A hallucination even as the headlights illuminated the road before her stricken vehicle. A hallucination even as the sports car pulled alongside her, its tinted driver-side window sliding into the doorframe like molasses, its driver regarding Sango with eyes that burned like coal.

She was not well, floating as she opened her car door, stumbled toward him. Her tongue was sandpaper; she could barely get out the word “water.”

He reached into the backseat, produced a plastic gallon jug of water, held it out the driver-side window. She seized it, drank greedily, until she nearly threw up, and when her stomach settled, she drank some more. She thought of the pamphlet at the rest stop, something about salt pills, how it was dangerous, when very dehydrated, to drink large amounts of pure water without also ingesting salts. How it could cause the brain to swell, so much so you might need to cut a hole in the skull the size of a silver dollar with Kohaku’s birth year to relieve the pressure.

“I ran out of gas,” she said. “Can you give me a ride?”

The man gestured to the passenger seat, and she got in and closed the door. The interior was all leather and wood and brass, the vents spewing ice-cold air at her face and chest.

“I’m so glad,” she said. The stomachful of water quickly found its way to her pores, her face and chest and arms were suddenly slick with sweat.

“I didn’t break down,” she said. “I just ran out of gas. I didn’t realize just how far it was between gas stations on this road.”

The man’s eyes burned like coals.

“Could you drive me back to civilization?” she added.

He smiled, and his voice was low and smooth with a slight gravelly undertone.

“I think that would take a very long time. But I just came from a little town not too far up the road. It’s not much, but there’s a gas station and a repair shop and a very lovely little diner. The woman who owns the diner makes an excellent cherry pie. Her name is Mercy.”

Sango felt a strange warmth. Her mother made cherry pie every Christmas, and it was sweet and tart and perfect. Sango could not bear to make it herself since her mother’s death, and after three or four times of ordering the dessert in one restaurant or another and being disappointed in the flavor, she simply stopped trying it entirely. But she had the strangest strike of intuition, that the woman who owns the diner made a cherry pie that matched her mother’s recipe exactly.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Sango said. “I would be very grateful if you bring me there.”

“As you wish,” he said, and the tires clawed at the asphalt as he swung the car into a u-turn.

The air conditioner soothed her burning skin, cooled her down. Dashboard dials cast ghostly glows on the man’s face as he accelerated down the road.

“You’ve had a very long day,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind at all if you rested your eyes.”

She did feel strangely sleepy.

“Are you certain?” she said. “Sometimes it makes the drive easier to talk, just to keep alert.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “But I don’t mind the silence. I’ve driven this road so many times it’s second nature to me.”

“Will it be long?” she asked. “If I rest a little bit, we could trade off the drive, if you get too tired.”

“That’s very generous, Sango,” he said, which was very strange because she had not yet told him her name. “Thank you; I may take you up on that. But for now, perhaps you should sleep a little.”

“You’re very welcome, Naraku,” she said, which was also very strange, as he had not yet told her his name, either. “Will we be there soon?”

“Yes, Sango. We’ll be there before the sunrise.”

“I think it will make me very happy to see Mercy,” Sango said.

“I think so too,” said Naraku. “She is a truly beautiful creature, unlike anyone I have ever known. Whenever I am traveling with a companion, I always go out of my way to visit, and introduce my companion to her.”

“She must get along very well with people,” Sango said.

“Yes,” Naraku said. “It is a very pleasant diversion from my work, Sango, to make a friend on this desolate road, and show her Mercy.”

 

**4.**

 

There was something very odd about Naraku. He was very well-dressed, in a sheer suit, she thought, but in the darkness of the car the patterns and color of his clothing were difficult to identify. His hair was black and long, his face was handsome, sharp-featured, and his eyes were blue but became red if she looked at them from the corner of her eye. Sometimes they burned like coals. What an interesting medical condition.

She had been driving for so long, and the ordeal of being stranded and nearly killed and rescued again made her so impossibly tired. The road was hypnotic, curving one direction and then the other, the dashed yellow median a metronome, a heartbeat. She sleeps, she thinks, but it’s difficult to tell.

Once, when she closes her eyes, and opens them again to find her neck stiff and her body sliding down the passenger seat, she realizes she must urinate. This pleases her at first - clearly she is decently hydrated. She waits some time, perhaps ten minutes. Surely their destination is very close by now. Soon the urge is too great, and she asks Naraku to pull over, and he does so without argument.

She opens the door and walks into moonlit darkness. There are animals out here, among the sand and stone, so she must not stray far. Moreover, she can only barely hold her bladder, and ten steps past the road she removes her panties, hikes her skirt up to her waist, spreads her feet in a wide stance, and relieves herself. She finds it very strange she is not embarrassed by this, knowing a strange man is so very close, seeing a most unladylike biological function. Her panties are damp in her hand, sopping with now-cold sweat. She does not want to wear them any longer. She hooks them on a finger, spins them about, and flings them into the night. The white cotton catches on the branch of a Joshua tree and hangs defeated in the still air.

The car is uncomfortably cold now. Naraku apologies, explaining the air conditioner is malfunctioning. He offers to pull over and lend her his suit jacket, but she turns it down, as they will arrive at their destination very soon. She can feel the goosebumps on her arms and legs. She can feel her nipples stiff against her bra.

“There’s something out there,” Naraku says, crossing the dashed yellow line to pass. She sees nothing but smells a strange combination of rotten fruit and sour milk. She closes her eyes.

 

**5.**

 

The viewing was ended. The casket was to be closed. Only the closest family was allowed to view this, the closing of the casket. There were three people in the room then, herself and the funeral director and Kohaku, and only two of them were alive. He was so young, so perfect. She loved him, and told him she loved him, when he was alive. But she never told him that he was beautiful, utterly beautiful.

“Can I kiss him, on his cheek? Would that be wrong?” she asked.

“Of course you can, Sango,” said the funeral director. “That is perfectly normal.”

“Will he be cold?”

“No, not cold.” The funeral director gestured to the casket lining, and to the wreath of flowers on the bottom half of the casket, which was closed. “He will be like this flower, or this cloth. Room temperature.”

Sango nodded, and kissed Kohaku, and his cheek was room temperature. Dead people are not cold. When people die they are room temperature. Like this flower, or this cloth.

The car swerved, jostling Sango awake.

“There’s something out there,” said Naraku. The headlights illuminated a round shape that might have been a dead armadillo. There was a slight coppery taste in her mouth, and the cold no longer bothered her. She splayed her fingers over the air conditioning vent, and the air was not cold, but room temperature, like a flower or a piece of cloth.

She was so tired, though. She closed her eyes and dreamed of Miroku, a boy she dated in high school. The way he smelled, the taste of his mouth, the firmness of his bare chest beneath her fingers. She dreamed of that time they made out under the bleachers, the scent of cut grass and aluminum. The surprise and anticipation as his hands moved under her shirt, the gasp and giggle that slipped from her lips as she felt the clasp of her bra come open. The extraordinary rush as his his hands moved up her ribs. The way he cupped her naked breasts and told her she was sexy and extraordinary and perfectly beautiful and she absolutely and completely believed him.

She awoke, feeling warm, embarrassed. Naraku’s eyes faced straight ahead, nothing in his countenance suggesting she had been indiscreet, that she had spoken words or moaned, that he could in any way sense the insatiable arousal that clung to her skin.

“There’s something out there,” Sango said. The high-beams were on, she could see very far, and the obstruction was very large. Naraku passed the obstacle, and it was a pack of wolves tearing apart a steer. Sango watched its viscera spill from the abdomen and thought she felt much the same when the police officer at the door told her there had been an accident involving her parents, and in the most roundabout and verbose manner, informed her they were dead.

 

**6.**

 

She dreamed of Kuranosuke, and their weekend trip up to his family cabin with their friends Kouga and Ayame. The beauty of the Pacific Coast Highway. Reckless in their infatuation with each other, a love that burned too brightly. They broke up a month later, after Kuranosuke declared their relationship would become all the more stronger if they should invite Ayame into a threesome. But this was before that, when they were still in love, and she still believed Kuranosuke wanted to make her happy. He was driving, and sober enough, but Kouga decided there was no good reason the rest of them should be, and passed around a fifth of Jagermeister. Sango did not think too much about how Kuranosuke’s eyes kept flicking to the rearview mirror as Kouga pawed at his girlfriend, sending Ayame into gigglefits and squealing that she was so embarrassed, even as she wove fingers into Kouga’s hair and held him fast to her cleavage. Sango, too, was infected with a perverse curiosity, all the more dangerous with the over-sweet liquor warming her belly and melting away her common sense while bolstering her competitive instinct.

Her dream followed her memory quite closely, her teasing comments, her finger toying with the straps of her top and her bra on her left shoulder, her fidgeting back and forth. She remembered unfastening her seatbelt and turning to him, gripping his headrest and bringing her mouth to his ear, licking and nibbling and whispering terribly obscene things she had heard in movies. She remembered her increasing recklessness, her free hand exploring Kuranosuke’s chest and thighs, his complaints about her distracting him. She remembered how it felt in her stomach when she kissed him, and he could not see the road, the thunk of the right-rear tire exiting the roadway, the machine-gun sound of the tire digging up gravel and turning the tire and wheel well into a rock tumbler. The car swerved, throwing Sango hard against the passenger door, badly bruising her left elbow against the window, and twisting her ankle as she slipped forward, off the passenger seat and into the footwell.

She remembered how strange it was to be suddenly stopped, beside the road, the vehicle spun around, facing fifty feet of disturbed dirt, three feet of disturbed gravel, and a two-lane highway with festive black swirls of rubber.

She remembered the fear and the embarrassment, the acid and bile at the back of her mouth, the heat on her cheeks. She remembered how it felt to hear Kuranosuke say, “Ayame, Kouga, are you two OK back there?” and await their answers, and then turn to Sango and say, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

She had no words to answer him, and simply curled up in the passenger seat, feet pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around them. They continued on to the cabin, and she remained a sobbing mess for a day and a night, and the following morning all of them had something urgent come up, and they left the cabin two days early. As they were Sango’s friends, they did not tell her she completely ruined their vacation, and they would never invite her to anything important like that ever again.

Sango relived this moment in nightmares sometimes. Of all the sad moments in her life, somehow this one stuck out more than even the death of her parents. Why should loss of her loved ones not affect her nearly as much as a moment of fleeting shame? Was it because the thought echoing through her head, over and over again, was how very close they were to a terrible crash? The thought of Kohaku being totally alone? Or, far worse, the thought of surviving, her crumpled body carted to a hospital, Kohaku being called out of class to be told the news. Would someone at the school drive him to the hospital? Would the highway patrol tell him how the crash occurred? Would the doctor list her injuries without comment? Or would he, with perfect medical detachment, explain that his sister’s broken wrist was due to having her hand down the front of Kuranosuke’s underwear at the moment of impact?

“There’s something out there,” Naraku said, waking her. Shadowy figures, disturbingly human, tearing apart a goat. The goat cried out, making the same sound that Kohaku made when Sango told him, in the most roundabout and verbose manner, that their parents were dead.

 

**7.**

 

Sango was seventeen, prepping for her AP Calculus exam, when Kohaku knocked on her door and asked for her help on his homework assignment.

His fifth-grade reading class assignment was to read a story and answer questions. The story was Hansel and Gretel, at least, the portion between the siblings being sent off to their fates and them finding the gingerbread house where they would find an evil witch and burn her alive.

“All right, Kohaku,” Sango said. “Before we start, can you summarize the story?”

“Hansel and Gretel were brother and sister,” Kohaku said. “Their family didn’t have enough food, so their mom and dad sent them into the woods. They gave them a loaf of bread, and Gretel tore up the bread and placed it on the ground so they’d be able to find their way back to where they started. But the birds ate the pieces of bread, so when Hansel and Gretel wanted to go back they didn’t know which way to go.”

“Very good,” said Sango. “So, what question in your homework do you have trouble with?”

“This one,” Kohaku said.

The question was, “Why did Gretel put the breadcrumbs on the ground?”

“But you just told me,” Sango said. “So that they could turn around and go back the way they came.”

Kohaku shook his head, his cheeks red with frustration, eyes suddenly watery.

“But _why_ , Sango?” he asked. “Their mom and dad weren’t going to take _care_ of them anymore! Why would they go _back_ , Sango?”

He was such a sensitive boy, and so easily worked up. She pulled him close as he broke down sobbing, letting the front of her shirt soak up his tears as he patted his back and cooed at him and let him work the sadness out.

“ _Tell_ me, Sango. _Please_ tell me. What were they going back _to_?”

 

**8.**

 

The dream was much the same. Again Kuranosuke asked the couple in the backseat if they were all right, and again he asked Sango what the fuck she was thinking. But in this dream, Sango did not cower and did not cry. In this dream, Sango grasped a fistful of Kuranosuke’s shirt, and said, “I’m thinking you need to shut your fucking mouth and get this piece of shit back on the road.” In this dream, Sango stared down Kuranosuke, and no one spoke a word as he manhandled the car back onto the roadway.

In this dream, Sango waited until the speedometer passed 45 mph before laying her head on Koranosuke’s lap and unbuttoning his pants, to the combined shock of everyone in the vehicle. In this dream, Sango said “Watch the road” before she took Kuranosuke into her mouth.

“There’s something out there,” Naraku said, jolting her awake. A naked woman, bleeding from her throat, a man embracing her from behind, mouth to her neck. The blood coated her breasts in a sticky sheen, and dried and clotted in her pubic hair. The woman was room temperature, like this flower. The man was cold, like something that could not die.

She felt the need to look in her purse for something, and opened it on her lap, thumbing through the contents. Tissues and melted lipstick, crumpled receipts and other trash. She collected these things in her hand, squeezing tightly, and extended her hand out the window, discarding the detritus of her purse into the night. A rush filled her; these things were so light in her hands, but discarding them felt like weight being lifted. She became more bold, discarding the contents of her purse one by one. Loyalty cards for stores she hadn’t been to in months, surrendered to the airstream one by one. American Red Cross certifications for First Aid, another for CPR, and a blood donor card, with her blood type and a list of -

“Keep that one,” Naraku said, and she obligingly placed it on the center console.

Credit cards she could do without. A bank card for an account near enough to zero. Her driver’s license, she surely needed that.

“But you aren’t driving,” Naraku said, and he was right, and the piece of plastic that declared what she looked like and where she lived fluttered away behind them.

The picture of the woman on her driver’s license reminded her that there were other pictures, of other people, and these too were so heavy in her hands. Pictures of her friends, her parents, her brother, in different places, different clothes, different ages, alone and together, in so many permutations. Why did she have these, why so many? Did she really think she would forget her family, that she would not remember the man and the woman who raised her, and the brother she was so proud of?

One by one the wallet photos in her purse were gripped by the wind and drown out into the night. Her purse, now empty, was purposeless, and this too she cast out. Even so, she was too heavy, like someone had sewn lead shot into her clothing. In the pocket of her sweater she found a small card with a picture of a saint. In the back was a quote from the Bible, beneath Kohaku’s name and the date of his birth and of his death. The card told her where donations could be made, and what words to say might bring someone comfort.

“You don’t need that anymore,” Naraku said, and his eyes flared as she read the prayer to herself. A foul stench filled the car, sulfurous and putrid. She had the sudden thought that Naraku might not actually be helping her. But Naraku was right, she did not need it anymore, and discarded it as well.

 

**9.**

 

“Why breadcrumbs?”

“Kohaku?”

Sango glanced across the living room; Kohaku was flipping through a college textbook for his “Evolution of the Fairy Tale” class - one of his humanities electives. Much like Sango herself, Kohaku teetered on homesickness most of his first semester and came home about every other weekend.

“Hansel and Gretel,” Kohaku said. “The fairytale. Their parents try to abandon them in the woods, just by walking around until the kids are lost and then leaving them. The first time, the kids gather white stones the night before, and then drop them as they walk so they can follow them back. The second time they’re locked in the house the night before and don’t get a chance to collect any stones, but they get a slice of bread and drop bits of that instead. I mean, I get it. They’re kids, they’re dealing with two adults that really shouldn’t be in charge of a hamster, nevermind children, and it’s pretty spur-of-the-moment. But, I mean, they’ve lived in the damn woods their entire lives, right? They’ve surely seen birds before. They must know you can’t just put food on the ground and expect it to still be there later.”

“Well, they’re also getting abandoned in the woods by their shitty parents, and they keep trying to come back home anyway,” said Sango. “I’m guessing they’re not thinking more than one step ahead. Honestly, the witch planning to eat them wasn’t too many ticks down in terms of the quality of their home life.”

Kohaku chuckled.

“But please, enlighten me, O Master Survivalist,” Sango said. “What is the proper way to find your way back to the residence of two people who are not subtle about wanting to kill you?”

“All right,” Kohaku said, “and I’m totally going to put this in my essay and you can’t stop me. The two of them were locked in the house all night, so they couldn’t collect white stones, right? But they went out for a walk in their normal clothes. All they had to do was to take a scarf or a shirt or anything made of cloth, and unweave it and break the threads into short pieces the night before, and suddenly they’d have hundreds of markers they could hang on tree branches, all casual-like. They’d be able to find their way back easy that way. To their asshole parents, who would probably get sick of this whole business and just axe them to death or something.”

“Very clever,” said Sango. “Although it’s a bit of a gamble, isn’t it? Maybe it’s too far off-track from what your professor wants to read.”

“I’ll be sure to add in a bunch of purple prose and make it seem like some deep meta-analysis,” said Kohaku. “Professor Siffer is a true-blue death-of-the-author type so he’ll eat that shit up.”

“Careful about that,” said Sango. “Siffer’s been teaching this class for a decade. How much experience do you have in bullshitting professors in their own field, and how much experience do you think he has in seeing through bullshit? You can try it, but I gotta say I don’t like your odds.”

 

**10.**

 

“You’ve lost, Naraku,” Sango said.

“Oh?”

He glanced at her, clearly fascinated by what she was about to say.

“That’s right. Your plan won’t work. Do you know why?”

“Pray, tell me.”

“Breadcrumbs,” she said.

“Breadcrumbs?”

“Like Hansel and Gretel. All this time I’ve been dropping breadcrumbs. Evidence that will lead the police directly to us. It’s only a matter of time, Naraku.”

“Is that right?”

“You fool,” she said. “What did you think I was doing all this time? Just cleaning out my purse? No, Naraku. Someone will find the trail. All these personal items. You didn’t even notice, did you? Your license plate. I used a pen to write it in the lining of my purse.”

“No,” Naraku said. “You have me there. You really saw my license plate?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m not some idiot who would get into a strange car without checking the plate.”

“And you’re sure you got it accurately?”

“Yes, Naraku. Shall I recite it you?”

“If you wish.”

“I remember it clear as day,” Sango said. “Your license plate is triangle Stephen, six lambs begging for death in Latin, and the way Neapolitan ice cream tastes when it melts a bit too much and gets refrozen with ice crystals.”

“Damn,” Naraku said. “You have a remarkable memory. I guess it’s just a matter of time then, isn’t it?”

“You don’t stand a chance. And killing me will only make things worse. Everything you’ve done I carefully wrote down with that same pen, on every inch of my clothing. You didn’t even notice, did you? You were just driving along, thinking you were so clever, all the while the records of your crime lay behind us.”

“I fear I am undone then,” Naraku said. “All this time I thought you were simply too warm, and that was the reason you’ve thrown all your clothes out the window.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Sango said. “I’m not too warm. I’m room temperature, like this flower.”

“Or this cloth,” said Naraku.

“Yes, exactly.”

“And that necklace?” Naraku said. “Have you forgotten what it was you intended to do with it?”

She glanced down. She was not fully naked, not exactly. A small silver crucifix on a thin silver chain dangled between her breasts.

“This necklace,” she said. The crucifix was warm between her fingers. Not like this flower, or this cloth. Naraku grimaced as she touched it; the moonlight hit him in such a way he appeared gray and balding and sickly, and there was the foul stench of an animal rotten to the point of liquefaction. She could use this. She could kill him with this.

“Please don’t use that,” Naraku said. “If that crucifix should touch the pavement, I will be banished from the earth.”

She smiled.

“You made a terrible mistake, Naraku. You just told me the way to defeat you.”

The chain snapped with a quick tug, and the silver cross glistened in the moonlight as she cast it out the window, glowing like the morning star. Her heart fluttered in triumph. She had destroyed him, and his cries of agony were music to her ears.

“Oh no,” said Naraku, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “Not that.”

 

**11.**

 

The dream was much the same. She blew Kuranosuke as he drove, but didn’t let him come, not until they reached the cabin. The speedometer clawed toward ninety-five miles per hour, the engine sucked air greedily, the tires swallowed the road. The headlights illuminated the cabin, and all four car doors opened at once, spilling a fog of raw sex over the gravel driveway. They stumbled out into the front yard, and in moments she and Kuranosuke were rolling on the grass and tearing off each others’ clothes. She came to rest in the front lawn, in the center of the sixty-six foot circumference of stone and salt and ash. Moments later, Kouga too came to her, and soon there were teeth and tongue on either side of Sango’s throat, four hands exploring and worshipping her body. She wove fingers into their hair as they brought their mouths to her breasts, cradling their heads as they suckled. Her breasts were so sore, her nipples stung, and white liquid spilled from the men’s lips. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment; she hadn’t meant to lactate, nor could she explain how that was even possible, but each of them unlatched in turn and told her not to worry, that her milk was delicious, and they drank ravenously. The grass inside the divination circle smoldered.

She had forgotten about Ayame, until the girl’s mouth was between her legs, bringing Sango unparalleled pleasure. Ayame’s tongue slipped between her folds, making her toes curl. Sango protested, but Ayame told her it was all right, and besides, Sango had one million, four hundred sixty three thousand, eight hundred thirty-three ova, but would never need more than a few hundred, and would not even notice the loss of a mere hundred thousand.

Ayame’s tongue pierced her cervix and Sango screamed and screamed and screamed.

Just before she passed out, as the pain became white incandescence and the blood soaked into the parched grass, Sango thought how unfair it was, she had been waiting so long, and yet her friends refused to show her Mercy.

 

**12.**

 

She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her hands around them. She was floating in warm fluid, listening to her mother’s heartbeat.

“Watch the road,” Naraku said.

She reached forward in the inky darkness, her fingers finding something soft yet firm, rigid steel sheathed in flesh. She traced its length, its curve, fingers brushing over the supple leather, and when she gripped this appendage tightly, the creature to which it was attached growled in pleasure. Blue headlights burned away the mist, illuminating each patch of asphalt bare seconds before it fell beneath the tires of her mount, and as her thumbs brushed the corinthian leather steering wheel, her chest vibrated with the roar of ravenously hungry 3.4 liter V-6 and the twin scroll supercharger that shoveled air down its throat.

The road ahead was as flat and straight as a yardstick laid out on the sand, disappearing into the horizon, and the sand on either side of the pavement flowed like molasses to form ruddy rocks and hills and valleys. She was traveling West now, pacing the daylight, the sunset ahead of her, the sunrise behind. It was still night. It would always be night.

She turned to her right, to her passenger. A decrepit old man, naked and hairless save whatever foot-long gray wisps clung to either side of his head, translucent white and papery skin loosely hanging from the bones of his arms and legs, distended belly spilling onto his lap. About the only healthy-looking part of him was his mouth, sharp white teeth beneath full red lips.

“Thank you,” Naraku said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a meal.”

Sango furrowed her eyebrows. When had she last eaten?

“Such a generous young woman,” Naraku said. “To show such pity on such a lowly hitchhiker. To stop and open your door to an old man in a lonely place. It would have been more than enough to have left me at that diner, you know. That was all I asked when you picked me up. You remember, don’t you?”

She remembered. The poor old man lost in the desert. Abandoned by his own people. His own children. How terrible, for a person to be so alone, to have no family whatsoever. Nowhere for him to go, nowhere for him to be. Asking only she open her door to him, drive him down the desert road, just until they find a phone. Don’t they have emergency phones every mile?

“The diner,” Naraku said. “You remember. A converted train car in the middle of nowhere. Gleaming aluminum and glass. What did we have there, Sango? What did we eat?”

“Cherry pie,” Sango said, the very words bringing the sweet texture to her tongue.

“Yes, that’s right,” Naraku said. “Do you remember our waitress? What was her name?”

She envisioned a woman, a faceless woman, or maybe she simply thought of the word “woman” and a form appeared, a creator of life, provider of nourishment. Yes, there was a waitress, a naked woman, her belly swollen with children, ten thousand children, her breasts swollen with milk, and her shoulder bled from the nametag pinned to her flesh. Sango read the name.

“Mercy. You showed me Mercy,” Sango said.

Her skin itched. Fractal patterns of white skin beneath red. The blood coating her breasts had dried, and formed the most interesting shapes. Whose blood was this? Why was she naked?

“So generous,” Naraku said. “Even after treating me to such a meal, you still invite me to your home. For Christmas dinner. You remember Christmas dinner, don’t you? Your parents and your brother and yourself, sharing such precious moments together?”

“Yes,” Sango said. “Yes, I remember. It’s been so long, Naraku. To share a meal with my brother and my parents - I think it’s been years since we all shared a table.”

“Six years,” Naraku said. “They are waiting.”

“Yes,” Sango said. “They are waiting.”

“There’s something out there,” Naraku said. “Watch the road.”

Something large and bright and red lingered ahead; Sango slowed. A construction sign? Flashing red lights? Bridge out? No. There’s something out there. A red heifer, hooves of burning sulfur, asphalt melting beneath him. Smoke-trails from its seven horns, and its three eyes burned like coals as it stared Sango down. She activated her turn signal, passed the creature, and grimaced as it opened the third of its five mouths and bellowed an ancient incantation that turned the moon bloody red.

“That was close,” said Naraku.

The car swallowed air, devoured pavement, and licked up the strips of yellow paint in the center of the road like they were breadcrumbs.

“Will Mercy be there?” Sango asked. “At Christmas dinner?”

“Of course, Sango. Mercy is always there. She thanks you for the invitation, and will gladly share her recipes with your mother. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes,” said Sango. Her mother was a wonderful woman, but Sango couldn't ever recall her baking a dessert so delicious as Mercy's cherry pie. How lovely it would be if her mother could learn Mercy’s recipe. “I hope we arrive soon”

“Very soon, Sango. We’ll be there before the sunrise. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

She nodded. She knew that already.

“I think I’ll rest now, Sango,” Naraku said. “Please watch the road for me. And if you see a hitchhiker, you are welcome to stop. Your family would not mind another visitor, would they?”

“Not at all,” Sango said. “In fact, I insist I stop.”

The creature beside her yawned, teeth like razor blades and tongue like sandpaper.

“There are so many unfortunate souls on this road, Naraku. Don’t you see?”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Naraku, nestling into the leather seat, already half-asleep.

“So many unfortunate souls. But I will rescue them. I will rescue all of them.”

Her fingernails dug into the steering wheel, and the engine moaned in satisfaction. Her hands were cold, like something that doesn't hurt anymore.

“They must see what I have seen,” Sango said. “I must show them Mercy.”

 

 _Monster_  
_How should I feel?_  
_Creatures lie here_  
_Looking through the window_  
_\- Meg & Dia_

 

**END**

 


End file.
